Sesan fire, December 2023 Sesan, Kaoh Nheaek
The fire started on 29 December 2023 in Sesan, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,710 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 79th largest in Stung Treng since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 13 in Cambodia in 2023, of 28.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,710ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 29 Dec 2023 – 21 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 29 Dec
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 133
- in a single hotspot: 31 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 41MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 171 ha in 2016, 106 ha in 2020, 1,374 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,542 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Sesan where it started2,650 ha reached on 29 Dec1.0 %
-
74 ha reached on 3 Jan0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Jan | 32.9 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 6 Jan | 33.2 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 7 Jan | 33.6 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 8 Jan | 33.8 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 9 Jan | 34.3 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 10 Jan | 34.4 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Jan | 34.3 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Jan | 33.3 °C | 40 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Jan | 33.5 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Jan | 32.5 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jan | 33.4 °C | 37 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Jan | 33.1 °C | 37 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Jan | 33.9 °C | 39 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Jan | 34.5 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Jan | 34.2 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Jan | 33.8 °C | 38 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Jan | 34.1 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Jan after | 33.9 °C | 39 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Jan after | 34.2 °C | 36 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 24 Jan after | 32.5 °C | 39 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Jan after | 33.2 °C | 37 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 18 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 133Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sesan fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 December 2023 to 21 January 2024 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2024 to 15 January 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,710 hectares (27.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sesan (2,650 ha, 1.0 %); Kaoh Nheaek (74 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cambodia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 15 January 2024 → 21 January 2024.
- Start date: 5 January 2024 → 29 December 2023.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 January 2024 to 15 January 2024. 133 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.